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Torch run: Peace or propaganda?

The International Olympic Committee has heralded the torch relay as &quot;a journey of harmony, bringing the message of peace to people of different nationalities, cultures and creed.&quot;

By Brett PopplewellStaff Reporter

Sat., April 12, 2008

The International Olympic Committee has heralded the torch relay as "a journey of harmony, bringing the message of peace to people of different nationalities, cultures and creed."

But the relay's roots are embedded in the most notorious propaganda campaign ever.

At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, 3,422 young Aryan runners were hand-picked by Nazi leaders to transport a flame from the Temple of Hera on Mount Olympus, site of the ancient games, to Berlin. Endorsed by Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, the first relay was meant to signify Nazi Germany's rise to prominence.

"The mythology is growing out of proportion right now," says Peter Donnelly, author of Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies.

"Since Berlin, governments have made more and more of it. The one in Australia ran all over Australia and Southeast Asia, promoting Australia's economic ties. In Athens, they sent it around the world. Now China, of course, wants to send it even further around the world to connect it to all the ancient civilizations."

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The attention the relay has received this week only adds to the mythology surrounding the torch – mythology that began in the darkest corner of the 20th century, not ancient Greece.

The original Olympics were a seasonal celebration where a truce between the city-states would last through the Games. The Games were played in Olympia, site of Mount Olympus, where several flames would burn in honour of the Greek gods. An Olympic flame was not attached to the modern games until 1928, when a flame rose high above the host city of Amsterdam.

Introduced in Berlin, the relay carried on in London in 1948, the first Games held after World War II.

"From the current media coverage of protests, you'd think that the flame was actually sacred, lit by some `higher authority' – but it's not," says Helen Lenskyj, a professor of sociology of sport.

The flame is extinguished at the end of every Olympics and rekindled at Olympia from the sun's rays for the next set of Games.

Until its recent dousing by pro-Tibet activists (the torch is always accompanied by backup lanterns lit from the same spark at Olympia), its extinguishment has never held much significance.

Pranks and protests are not new to the relay. A prankster once replaced the torch with a table leg wrapped with burning underwear and handed it off to the mayor of Melbourne, host of the 1956 Olympics.

Then there are those iconic moments when grace and inspiration are embodied by a torchbearer and move a captive audience, as was the case at the 1996 Atlanta Games when Muhammad Ali lit the cauldron with a torch in a steady right hand, while his left hand twitched as result of Parkinson's disease.

But is it possible for the flame to signify altruistic principles?

"In an ideal world it could be the torch that an 8-year-old sees and then becomes an Olympian, but if it gets funded by governments and private corporations, and if they are trying to get some message out because of that it will never get past that propaganda element," Donnelly says.

So what then for the next relay? The one already sponsored by Coca-Cola and the Royal Bank of Canada that promises to be the longest ever for the Winter Games. The one that will see the torch carried across Canada.

"We're looking for the torch relay to capture the people's imagination," says Renée Smith-Valade, spokesperson for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

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